Bargari case cracked, dera man key plotter, say cops
3 YRS ON SIT has so far arrested nine dera followers, including Bittu, for the 2015 sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib
KOTAKPURA: Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT), probing the three-year-old sacrilege cases, has named Dera Sacha Sauda follower Mohinder Pal Bittu as the main conspirator. The SIT claimed that Bittu threw a stolen “bir” (copy of Guru Granth Sahib) in a drain on the Devi Wala road here.
KOTKAPURA: Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT), probing the three-year-old sacrilege cases, has named Dera Sacha Sauda follower Mohinder Pal Bittu as the main conspirator.
The SIT claimed that Bittu threw a stolen “bir” (copy of Guru Granth Sahib) in a drain on the Devi Wala road here. The SIT also carried out a search on Saturday but failed to recover the bir.
“Bittu has confessed to the crime. Efforts are on to recover the bir,” said deputy inspector general and SIT head Ranbir Singh Khatra. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is probing the case has been informed about Bittu’s confession, he said.
“We also searched the naam charcha ghar (where dera followers offer prayers) to recover the bir, but nothing was found. Later, Bittu claimed that he had thrown the bir in a drain after scattering some of its pages in Bargari village,” added Khatra.
The SIT has so far arrested nine dera followers, including Bittu, for sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib.
The SIT is probing two cases of sacrilege — torn pages of Guru Granth Sahib which were found at Malke village in Moga district in November 2015 and Gurusar (Bhagta) village in Bathinda district in October that year.
The SIT rounded up Bittu in these two cases but later it emerged the he was also the main conspirator in 2011 Moga rioting and Bargari sacrilege cases.
The CBI is probing three cases: “Bir” stolen from Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on June 1, 2015, poster pasted in Bargari on September 25, 2015, and sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari village on October 12, 2015.
Bittu, a state committee member of the Sirsa dera, was nabbed from Palampur in Himachal Pradesh on June 7.
COPS CLAIM BITTU THREW A STOLEN ‘BIR’ (COPY OF GURU GRANTH SAHIB) IN A DRAIN; TEAM CARRIES OUT A SEARCH BUT FAILS TO RECOVER IT
He was on the run since August 2017 following the conviction of dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. To evade arrest, Bittu was living in Palampur where he ran a restaurant.
THE CASE
The sacrilege incident triggered a statewide outrage after a ‘bir’ was stolen from a gurdwara at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala on June 1, 2015. On October 12, 2015, torn pages of the ‘bir’ were found scattered in front of a gurdwara at Bargari village.
In June 2016, there were massive protests after an unidentified man gunned down Gurdev Singh, a dera follower, at his grocery shop at Burj Jawahar Singh Wala village of Faridkot.
REMAND EXTENDED
Police on Saturday produced nine dera followers, including Bittu, in the Moga court in a 2011 case of damage to public property registered at the Moga police station.
The court extended their remand by three days. Two more dera followers, including Narinder Sharma of Faridkot and Pardeep Kumar of Kotkapura, were arrested in the case.